~a squirrel on the mailbox~
~attempting to argue me out of breakfast~
~a church bell sends it flying into a tree~
~it chitters at children skipping down the street~
~I smile & go inside~
~it gets my breakfast after all~
~Tintinnabulum~
Sparrows nesting in the eaves flit dangerously near strangers crossing the porch. Hungry cries from the nest announce the event of birthing has come and is gone. These tiny shrill voices are nature’s call to morning as sure as the sun rises. A fat cat lays in the yard purring, pondering its next meal.
A child laughing nearby, whose tinkling voice somehow defies the tar rubber roar of traffic, is a sweet reminder of Sunday, late spring and bare feet, wiggly toes and dandelions, knows well to celebrate, embrace and engage the day. A deep rumbling in the earth precedes a low flying train.
A man with love in his heart makes a low humming sound, deep, deeper in his being than that of conscious awareness. His spirit becomes an instrument, a finely tuned harp, upon which wind fingers play and the voice of his lover. A smile visits his lips. True beauty is borne, sweet silence on a Sunday morn.
http://wordwulf.comWordWulf
Inquiries: tracy@traceliteraryagency.com & wordwulf@wordwulf.com
© artwork & words conceived by & property of Tom (WordWulf) Sterner ©
She lived a hard life in a world where survival was the everyday waterline of success. I left her in that white room six years ago to howl a lament in the hospital parking lot, what turned out to be her death song. My sister came to join me. “Momma’s pain is over,” she said, “She is lost to us now.” I hurried back to the room to visit Momma’s hollow corpse.
Some weeks later my good sister advised me that she, two of my brothers, and other two sisters were taking Momma’s ashes from Colorado to Wyoming. They intended to make a ceremonial goodbye, to loose Momma’s remains on the Wyoming wind as Momma had done with her husband, our stepfather, five years before. She released him to the garden and the small square of grass on their red dirt, moo cow, Wyoming ranch. My sister asked me, “Will you go with us?”
Oldest of seven children, Momma’s first son, I replied, “No, I’m not ready to say farewell to her and would never leave her with the monster man, our stepfather. The oldest of my brothers, fourteen months younger than myself, was “doing time” in the prison at Canon City. Momma never liked him much, favored me always. The two of us, my brother and me, knew a different kind of life than our siblings. We shared a love/hate bond because of the Momma dynamic. I asked my sister to divide Momma into seven parts. “Take them all to Wyoming and do what you will with five of them. Bring the two last back to Colorado after they have witnessed five degrees of separation. These two parts I will keep for myself.”
Life goes on. Six years later I found myself married to what finally felt like “the right woman” for me. She was sixth born in a middle-class family of seven children. Her father was a successful pharmacist and devoted father, her mother a good church woman and dedicated wife and mother. My wife regaled me with happy stories of family road trips and camp-outs, girl scouts and bible study. The younger man, me, would have become confused and angry listening to stories from that “other world.”
We live in California now, my wife and I, 1280 miles away from my five children in Colorado, each of those miles the one too far. Having spent her childhood in Washington and Oregon, many of my wife’s stories have the ocean as a backdrop, the most significant of those, in my opinion, were the two trips she and her siblings took, the singular dual ritual of releasing father and mother into the wind and vast deeps of the Pacific, a place they both admired, respected, and loved.
Recently I drove those 1280 miles to spend a couple of weeks with my children and grandchildren. My youngest son of twenty-three years returned to California with me to spend a few days visiting. Momma was with us in her plastic bag in the black plastic box with the lid that will never close.
My Colorado boy wanted to see the ocean and so off we went. My wife drove us the 150 squiggly miles to where California ends in the west. I took two pinches of Momma from the box, spread them on the sand-silt of the beach, pressed my fingers to my lips, tasted the silken residue of Momma’s ashes.
My son stood ankle deep in the tide. “Woo!hoo” he whooped ecstatic, speaking into his projector while filming the big water, his vast, endless and beautiful youth enveloped by and a-tempo with the terrible roar of the ages. I returned my gaze to the sand, water licking at my boots, and she was gone.
Momma was afraid of water. She took no comfort in its swell and weigh. Still I gave a bit of her back. She would have liked my wife’s people, her parents. The me I am now would have too. In another life where it was safe to let go we might have been regular folks, good people, like them.
My brother is bitter, wants no part of what is left of Momma. The ashes left are mine to do with whatever I choose. I’ll take her with us when we move back to Colorado, repeat the ocean ritual in those great Rocky Mountains we both loved so well. I might never let go of my Cherokee Mother, she will certainly never let go of me. If it were to be, the lid would close o’er that plastic box of Momma’s Ashes.
http://wordwulf.comWordWulfPacific Interlude
Today, while cleaning the garage, a strange and interesting event occurred. A dust devil, mini tornado, danced up the driveway and across the cement floor. It wandered a bit in its to and fro sway, then dashed forward where it spent itself on the phat black and chrome body of my ol’ Hawg.
Being a man of voice whose mouth has learned to close, the better to listen to nuances of phantom messages, I settled myself in the dust of my new Friend. I contemplated kicking the ol’ Hawg to life, which deed was done before I knew it. Another specific and one-time event as she woke purring on the first stroke. Entranced, I backed ‘er out of the garage, pointed ‘er toward the street and let ‘er have ‘er head.
Rolling West, down Baseline Road, memory took a swipe at me. It dragged me back to the eighties, that same street and new boots, bearded brothers before me and roaring up from behind, the guitar man, Matthew, life-Friend at my side. Up the mountain we rode, to the wedding of Phil Howell to his beautiful Asian, silken-haired lady and their wind faces under the pines. The preacher looked smart in his dark clothes, his words of troth accompanied by the music of creaking leather, the cooling metal of iron horses and darting birds, curious in their singsong quick-eyed way.
Past Table Mesa Boulevard, traffic and Boulder lights fading behind, the road smooths out, single lane, an easy climb through the foothills. For the seasoned Colorado rider, a certain preparedness takes place. Hairpin curves, jackknives await, cool, tree-shadowed paths and startling, sun-splashed views. Motor and cam, heartbeat and blood, fuse in a shift, down shift, tap the brake and throttle forward fluid movement. Sunrise Amphitheater lies just ahead, around this blind curve or that, red stones surrounded by and punctuated by sturdy pine and scrabble bush. I leave my war-worn Hawg, my dragon, on ‘er stand and follow the steep path down.
Memory quick-trips me backward to the seventies and my brothers, before the prison in Canon City stole their hearts. We hauled our band gear up that ol’ mountain, carried amplifiers, guitars, drums, and generators down into the Sun Circle where we established ourselves on that side-o’-the-mountain open stage. I drank Seagram’s Seven, howled my lyrics and played my harmonica into the mountain air and white cloud sky. Boulder lay behind me, a sheer backdrop to a young man on the edge of time and certainly unaware of the audacity of his behavior. No permits, no appointments, just music and the poor-boy Sterner brothers, doin’ that thing they used to do. A group of Jewish People appeared later. Permit in hand, they advised us they had reserved this wondrous place for a very special wedding observance. We played a couple of our songs for ‘em while they performed a precise and circular tribal dance. They applauded our efforts and fed us, sent us back smiling to our West Denver homes.
A smile comes to me slowly, like Harry Chapin said, “It was a sad smile, just the same”. I light my second cigar of the day, feet planted on each side o’ the ol’ dragon, arms resting on her handlebar wings. A sparrow lands on my mirror, gives me a wink and flits away. I wonder its lineage, generations of mountain life past. Did its forbearers hear the poor boys’ noise, witness a certain binding of troth. I swear her stones are the same, each pine needle and chittering chipmunk. Sons born since have carried my music into a new age. It is theirs now and far different somehow. I remain unchanged like the face of Flagstaff. She knows what I might only guess. Time is on her side.
Cigar butt clenched tightly ‘tween my teeth, I give the ol’ War Horse a couple o’ kicks. She coughs and sputters to life. I tickle her throttle, glory in her growl and roar. A dust devil dervish giggles from the path, rises and kisses me on the cheek; how, the mountain, she speaks.
http://wordwulf.comWordWulf
~my brothers & I were ashamed & afraid~
~living in the West Denver Housing Projects in the sixties~
~it wasn’t the taunting of turf bullies that scared us~
~we were poorer than the people there~
~hiding out~living with our auntie~
~had to keep our noses clean & mouths shut~
~if someone snitched us out for being there~
~we’d be tossed out~then what~
~Cats' Eyes~
~cats’ eyes stare~
~from under cars~
~I used to shoot them~
~when I was a boy~
~rounds of four-hole~
~& poison when you reached it~
~five-pot in the middle~
~I remember circles~
~drawn with crooked sticks~
~in fresh summer dirt~
~steelies & aggies~
~hot sun & glass orbs~
~ball-bearings far from the wound~
~of their greased sleeves~
~pockets worn into holes~
~bare feet and stone bruises~
~wrestling in the housing projects~
~with brown children~
~beaten for a dime~
~proud as a piss-ant~
~ &twice as hungry~
~cats’ eyes tied~
~into knots in a bag~
~cobwebs~
~& a box of old shoes~
~spider bones and ashes~
http://wordwulf.com
WordWulf
This is your new blog post. Click here and start typing, or drag in elements from the top bar. ~I’ll never be a one-step man~
~too easily amazed and sidetracked~
~by the subterfuge of their meandering tales and asides~
~out-dickered and usually paying the asking price~
~I am pleasantly lost in the where of the sixteenth eagle~
~Eagle Bumps/One-Step Men~ What a glorious Sunday morning this is. It’s sixty-two degrees here in California with a cool breeze wafting through, kissing the stucco and glass of houses erected six feet from one another. It’ll do; this Sunday I’m okay with that. I told my children (before they were adults and I hope they still believe it) that Sterners don’t get goose bumps on their flesh. In our family we get eagle bumps. This cool morning has peppered my flesh with them.
Eagle bumps and cars swishing by on Highway 44 a few blocks south of here remind me of a Sunday morning in Wyoming in 1990 when I was involved with picking up a swather my stepdad, Glen, had purchased from an old sheep rancher named Jake. He was quite a character. Actually they were both characters (as if I’m not). Jake pointed up to the sky and suggested I count the eagles circling there, riding the currents, searching for prey or maybe just roller-coastering the wind.
Counting circling birds is one of those undertakings easier said than done. I kept coming up with fourteen, a number which doubled ol’ Jake over, bent at the waist and laughing his ass off every time I said it. Glen was aggravated by our intercourse. A one-step man, he wanted to get the swather back to his ranch so we could grease ‘er up and begin cutting his hay and alfalfa. Jake ignored his interruptions, wouldn’t listen to Glen’s dickering over the price of the machine, until he had finished schooling me on the art of counting swirling objects high in the sky. “Ya gotta mark a bird with yer eye,” he instructed, “Don’t blink; one blink and ya gotta start all over. Follow that bird and count ‘em off. You’ll get ‘er right every time.
There were fifteen eagles circling that day. Jake winked at me from his crinkly weathered face and reported that, at this time of year, eagles would always be found in pairs. To Glen’s consternation, this statement began the next step in Jake’s majestic bird tutorial. We had to find the sixteenth eagle. Glen gave up his dickering for a moment and, using his one-step man’s predator eye, found the bird perched on a telephone wire across the old washboard gravel road. “There ya go!” Jake laughed, coughing a bit between puffs on his Marlboro, “Ya got a good eye, son.”
Glen thanked him and attempted to one-step his way back into dickering. “You’re asking $1600.00 for that swather. It’s a John Deere, just what I’m looking for. I got fourteen one-hundred-dollar bills in my pocket here and Tom along to drive ‘er away.”
Jake continued to ignore him, chuckled and asked me what I was looking at. I was watching crows on the telephone wire with the lone eagle. They were caw-caw-cawing, hopping from side to side on the wire, raising all kinds of particular hell with the eagle. Never mind numbers, I was mightily impressed with the crows. I figured the eagle could easily take them down one chomp at a time and wondered why it didn’t. “Countin’ crows on a wire is a whole different barrel o’ fish,” Jake chortled, “Mark yer bird by a tall tree in the background, somethin’ that’s not movin’ or likely to move. Keep at it, you’ll get ‘er, kid.” I was forty years old and felt pretty good being referred to as a kid by this seasoned veteran, master of life and its living.
The morning dragged on and, around noon, Jake’s wife came from her country kitchen with egg salad sandwiches and a pitcher of lemonade. She was a taciturn woman, plump and composed in her flower-print Sunday dress and white apron with black cows wandering all over it. Standing next to her tall and lanky husband, they reminded me of the number ten. In the Olympics of Life that’s the number I would assign to them. “Fifty-five years this good woman has put up with me!” Jake quipped between bites.
Birds, jumper cables, and the art of cutting hay were the subjects of conversation during lunch. Glen knew better than to dicker during a country meal. Mrs. Jake (I never did know her name) went into the house to “freshen up”. She took the lunch dishes with her and soon emerged without her cow apron, pecked a kiss on Jake’s cheek and departed without a word in the couple’s ten-year-old Oldsmobile. “Off to sew quilts and gab with the church ladies; now we can have a beer,” Jake reported with a crinkly wink.
The afternoon wore on while Jake regaled us with stories of animal rights groups and the death of lambs. “They say there’s only two pair o’ matin’ eagles left in Wyoming,” he laughed while pointing a gnarled finger into the wild blue yonder. “Them feathered folks sure got a lot ‘o company. Must be from other states, maybe Colorado and South Dakota.”
“I’d like to get that swather home before dark,” Glen added hopefully, “Tom’s a city man. He’s never driven one, might drive off the road in the dark.”
“You’re in for a treat,” Jake said to me as he walked over to the machine. “That there’s the steering wheel but ya only use that to trim ‘er up. These levers here are the left and right turns o’ the machine.” The hunk of green steel, all belts, pulleys and grease zirks he was referring to reminded me of a Frazetta rendition of an iron dragonfly from hell.
“Like I said,” Glen put in, “I got fourteen one-hundred-dollar bills here. My hired man (that was me) has some money saved up. He has three kids to feed all by himself. I’d sure feel bad if I had to borrow money from him to buy the swather.”
“Come back another day if you have to,” Jake replied nonchalantly. “I expect some other lookers. I got prospects but you might get ‘er after all. You’re my closest neighbor and Tom here can drive ‘er ten miles down that ol’ dirt road. Anybody else’ll have to pay freight.”
“Ah hell,” Glen carped, extending a hand toward me. Upon this prearranged signal, I took the ten twenty-dollar bills Glen had given me at breakfast from my shirt pocket and handed them to him. He folded them into his wad of C-notes and handed them over to Jake.
Jake ambled off to the barn to get the owner’s manual and parts list for the twenty-year-old machine. Glen frowned at me. “You ‘n your damned birds just cost me two hundred dollars.”
Ol’ Jake died of cancer a couple of months later. I imagine he knew that was coming when he spent a day in the wild expanse of his Wyoming front yard dickering and telling stories with Glen and me. What a gift such knowing is. I’ll never be a one-step man, too easily amazed and sidetracked by the subterfuge of their meandering tales and asides. Out-dickered and usually paying the asking price, I am pleasantly lost in the where of the sixteenth eagle, the orneriness of crows, explaining eagle bumps to my grandchildren.
I do my best to keep promises and did so in the case of Jake by never telling anyone about the hundred dollars he poked into my shirt pocket before I mounted the cockpit of the swather monster. “Don’t tell him,” he said with a nod toward Glen who waited impatiently in his truck to follow me home in the dark. “You do somethin’ nice for those kids o’ your’un. Don’t tell them neither.” I went with them to see a movie at the Cowboy Theater in New Castle a week or so later. We enjoyed a steak dinner at the Cowboy Café and had enough money left for everyone to buy some goodies at 7-11, then drove fifty miles laughing and singing down the dirt road to our home on Skull and Crossbones Road.
~I’ve never felt like a miracle myself~
~each of my children did & still do to me~
~know what I mean~
~“She’s a good boy!”~
~how shall I name this~
~connection~
~child & beast~
~shepherd & magick fairy~
~great granddaughter~
~Jessa~
~playing fetch with my dog~
~Cinder~
~she laughs~
~claps her hands~
~chirps like a tiny bird~
~“She’s a good boy!”~
~the self-realization of youth~
~is awesome to witness~
~especially those close to your heart~
~with many decades behind you~
~they want so much~
~their aspirations reach so far~
~hope is reborn in your ancient spirit~
~determination & will, focused intent~
~bid you believe in & with them~
~they haven’t experienced failure~
~& are odds on~
~damned likely to succeed~
~to stand witness~
~the self-realization of youth~
~is a balm to the ancient heart~
~the hunt is not a killing~
~it is a prayer~
~Zedidiah & the kitten~
~visiting me in the camper~
~a new creature & my youngest son~
~once they’re adults~there are events~
~just like this~silent & simple, poignant~
~that jet us back to their childhoods~
~a smile for what is~
~a tear for what isn’t~
~wonderful melancholy~
~for what was~
~family~
~the circle intact~
|
RSS Feed